3 LOU Features You Have Not Discovered Yet

Shawna: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to today’s webinar.

My name is Shawna, and I’m joining you with LOU software over at Evosus headquarters.

Just want to say thank you so much for joining me today.

We are going to talk through some really exciting things I have top of mind: three features that we joke about as “three hidden features,” even though they’re not hidden. I’m sure some of you use them.

We’ve identified, after talking to so many clients using LOU and then internally when we use LOU, that there are a few features in LOU that are big power players that some of you may not know about or use to their full potential.

So that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. These are features that exist in LOU, but they also could possibly happen on paper or in different processes as well. So, whether you’re on LOU or not, please listen up, pay attention, because I think you’ll take a lot out of this conversation today as far as just good business practices to have.

And before we really get things kicked off, I do want to mention that if you have any questions during today’s webinar, there’s a Q&A box right down below. It says Q&A with a little question mark. Go ahead and drop your questions in that box.

When we get done demoing and showing you these really cool features, Shannon is our awesome panelist, and she will shout out all of your questions. We’ll make sure to get those answered for you today. So this is a very interactive session. We are here to answer your questions and here to have a conversation. So please don’t hesitate to ask those as the time goes on.

So with that, I’d love to just get started. I want to kind of give a lay of the land before I share my screen and demo and show you the goods of today. and I want to set the stage by telling you the three features we’re going to talk about today.

The three features we’re going to talk about are order stages (some people call them flags, but in LOU they’re called order stages), and then we’re going to talk about a feature called alias and a feature called tasks or my tasks.

I’d love to start by talking about tasks. and then I’ll show you really quick what that looks like in LOU. but it really can be anything you want it to be. What’s really cool about tasks is that they can be used for work orders and sales orders and telling a technician or a salesperson what needs to happen with an order.

But what we found really is the power player and the feature is the fact that you can use it for your business processes. So I don’t know about you guys, but I know when I was when I worked in the industry, we did things like replenishment orders and we ordered office supplies and we had sales staff kind of running showrooms, and there were lists of opening checklists and closing checklists, and our technicians needed to do things with their van regularly, right? You’ve got to get oil changed, you’ve got to get tires rotated, all of that sort of stuff. And it’s a lot. It can be a lot to remember for one person. and it’s really difficult to manage these huge companies where people are moving in and out all the time.

So what’s really cool about tasks in LOU is that you can set tasks for anyone within your company, you can set tasks for multiple people or everyone. and we suggest using tasks for things like that: business processes that have to happen. Do you need your retail staff to wash the windows every other Friday? You would just set a task for them, and it would go right away. Do you need them to order office supplies once a month on a certain date so that your purchasing manager can purchase them in bulk and get the best price?

Things like that are really helpful, and they just drop into a button called my tasks in LOU. So a really powerful feature. That’s the first one I wanted to talk about: my tasks. It’s really powerful. And with that, I’d love to share my screen and I’d love to talk about the other two features and kind of show you what that looks like. I think it will make the most sense that way. So I’m going to go ahead and share my screen and show you guys what LOU looks like, for those of you that have not seen LOU. So give me just one second to do that.

Alright, so this is LOU for those of you that haven’t seen LOU. It’s really simple, it’s really easy to use with these colored tiles on the dashboard. And the two features we’re going to walk through next are called LOU... Here we go. We’re going to go into sales orders and we’re going to talk about LOU order stages. This is what the sales order kind of screen looks like. And I should pause and tell you that stages work for opportunities through our marketing plan in LOU, they also work for estimates when you’re creating quotes and estimates, and then they also work for sales orders and work orders. So no matter what docent you’re working on in LOU, there is the option to create stages, and you can create custom stages. So , I’m going to go back home and I’m going to go to the operation tile and setup over here, and I’m going to show you how to create stages.

So we’re going to type in stages, and as you can see, it walks you through all of the options you have for stages. Every docent type can have custom stages because we know that stages within an opportunity are very different than stages within a work order, right? And you’d want to have custom stages for those. For the purpose of today’s conversation, I do want to show you the sales order stages. So we’re going to go ahead and open that up. And this is again how you create and you manage your stages within your company. These are completely custom. We give you suggestions on what they could be, but they’re going to be different for every single business, depending on who you serve and what your workflows really are. So , this is again a customized list for sales order stages. You can filter from active or all, being ones that are inactive. Maybe your workflows have changed over time, and you don’t need stages that you created a while ago. These are just some suggestions. This is what I would do if it was my company and sales orders and how I would process things: ready to confirm, schedule delivery, ready to order, waiting on a purchase order, pending payment or finance, ready to deliver. Maybe it’s a ship to a customer for an auto ship. Maybe the job is weather dependent. And the way that you would use these is you would really flow through the stages as you are working through that project.

So let me just show you what that looks like. This is how to create them. You can create on the bottom here. Literally, pops up a button for you. and let’s say, oh shoot, I didn’t mean to do that. That was an accident. I’m going to uncheck that box, and it just allows me to delete it. So I’m going to say that was an accident, and I did not mean to create that. And it will just delete it right off my list.

So now we know how to create them and how to manage them. How do you use them? What’s the point of these? So I want to go and I want to show you sales orders, and I’m just going to pull up a sales order for a customer that just called and wants to confirm their order.

Jake Beverage ordered a Vanguard hot tub. I’m just going to double click into this order. So what’s cool here is this profile section, and this is where your process stages are going to live.

Hot tip: best practice. Anytime somebody is coming into an order and taking action, their number one thing that they do should be to go update, and they need to change that order stage, right? They called the customer and confirmed the order. Now they need to change that order stage to pending purchase order or ready to order so that my purchasing manager can pull a list and she can see everything that’s ready to order without having to hunt down or go through individual sales orders. She can look at a full grid, filter it down, and see exactly what she needs to order. That's why these are so powerful and so important.

So this hot tub looks like it’s ready to deliver. Perfect. and then with stages, I also want to talk about Alias. Alias, again, is something we believe is highly underutilized. Alias, we know, is just another word for, it could be another name for something, but you can get really creative with aliases and the way that I would use aliases is one example is on a decent level, right? This is an alias for this specific docent, this specific sales order. People can wonder why I would need an alias for a docent?

This is how I would use Alias in a docent. Sometimes we sell hot tubs or we install pools to areas that we don’t go to every day. They’re not right in the metro area, they’re on the outskirts, they’re three hours away, but we still do service and deliver in those areas. But I’m not driving three hours to the coast to deliver one hot tub and then come all the way back, right? I’m batching those together. I’m doing all of those Coast deliveries on the same day because fuel is expensive, and mileage is a big deal. So I would create an alias for this order that’s called Coast run, and I’ll show you why that’s important in a second. So I created an alias, it’s called Coast run for this specific docent, and it’s ready to deliver as my stage.

Okay, now we’re going to go, let’s just go all the way back home, and I’ll show you how to get there. So now, fast forward, it’s the next day, and my delivery coordinator is talking to my delivery guy, and he’s like, “Hey, we’ve got a couple Coast runs. Is there anything else that needs to go, or do you have enough that makes sense for us to make that run and deliver those hot tubs?”

She’s going to go in here and she’s going to just go right back to sales orders. Super easy. She is going to filter by stage here. Again, we really encourage people on LOU to work off of what we call lists or grids because it makes it very visible. You can see everything you need to see.

So she wants to know who’s ready to deliver. Cool. All these people are ready to deliver, but who’s ready to deliver to the coast? And for that, I just type in Coast run, and all of my Coast runs would pop up.

This tells me, “Cool. Okay, we have four deliveries. Some of them have been waiting a long time. Some of them are newer, and these guys are all ready to go. Four deliveries is plenty to do a Coast run. So let’s do it. And you can go all the way, you can scroll over, you can see all you need to see. I know I need to take a deposit on this one, , and this one’s already scheduled.

So that is a good example of how you would use Alias on a docent.

I also want to talk through Alias on a customer level.

So customers are funny, right? We said that Alias is just another name for so if your name is Robert, and you go by Bill, and your sister calls you Billy, and she sometimes goes and picks up your chlorine for you, we would want those aliases to be on the customer level. But let’s think outside the box for a second.

What about the scenario where you have an address? Maybe you live in a condominium complex or a gated community. Okay, and you have an address, but you are part of a condo area like an Aamir condo complex.

You can put that Alias on the customer level so that when somebody is searching you or the service department is trying to get out to you, they can search that, and they can see exactly where you’re at, right? You have an address, but you’re totally on the outskirts or you’re in a gated community that they can’t get into to go try to find the address. They’re having a hard time. they can easily search that or see that that’s an alias for you, and that’s where you’re located.

Another example, I know all of you Hearth folks that are on the line, you guys do a ton of commercials, right? You do a ton of developments. You have great relationships with developers, and a lot of you do, you know, between 20 and hundreds of installs for these developers every year. You need to know who the developer is, but you also need to know who the customer that owns the home is. So initially, you’re doing business with Johnson Development, but eventually, someone you know, Kate Warsaw, buys that home, and that account becomes hers. But you do need to know that Johnson Development was the one that you did business with initially. Maybe you pay, you know, a kickback to Johnson Development at the end of the year, and you just need to pull a quick list to see all the jobs that they provided you. You could put Johnson Development as an alias on Kate’s account, and that just pops up. It's really simple. It’s right here, and it will be on the customer profile. And again, when you search your customers, it all pops up, so super super simple, , really easy to use.

And those are the top three features. I know that was really fast, , but it’s tasks (using them for business processes), it is stages (using them for opportunities, estimates, sales orders, and work orders to manage your workflow and to manage communication interdepartmentally), and then it’s aliases (in order to quickly search, seamlessly look for things, and identify people in very unique ways). So those are the top three features I wanted to go through today.

Again, this is the LOU home screen. It's really simple and really easy to use. And if you change your stages often or look at your tasks all the time, you could even add tiles onto your screen for those specific things.

So I'm going to go ahead and stop sharing my screen and kick it over to Shannon, our awesome panelist, to see if we have any questions.

Shannon: So far, we haven't had any questions. I think everything is going great!

Shawna: Well, we have a ton of resources for you guys. If you go to evosus.com and check out our video library if you want more information on these features, you should definitely do that. There's tons of great information there. And if you are curious about LOU and haven't quite taken the leap yet, but you want to maybe see these features in action or understand how they would work for your business, you can email LOU@evosus.com and we will get back to you.

We can schedule a custom one-on-one demo for you. Or if you are one of our LOU clients on the line, please feel free to reach out to your account manager. They can give you some one-on-one attention and some training on really utilizing these features to their full benefit.

So again, thank you all for joining us today. I know this was a really quick webinar, but it was short, sweet, and to the point. We look forward to seeing you next time. Please register for our upcoming webinars on evosus.com by going to the webinars button.

Thanks so much, have a good day guys.